Richard, David L., Struan and all:
I should say right up front that classical empiricism relates to the MOQ
only in the sense that Pirsig's ideas are meant to dispose of it. SOM is
laregely based on classical empiricism, but the MOQ's radical empiricism
is far different than any 18th century epistemology. But it seems worthy
of discussion because it's always best to know your enemies. There are
several William James fans amongst us, maybe they'll throw in a few
ideas on this topic too. It may shed light on John's Organismic MOQ as
well. I just wanted to offer a few observations beyond the basic
definition.
In the case of the moving train, I think its interesting to note that
your EYES trick you into thinking that you're moving, your body shifts
it weight to compensate for the inertial force and when that un-needed
counterforce jerks you, that's when you realize you've been tricked. One
sense was fooled , but another sense quickley reveals the fact that
you're not really in motion.
It seems reasonable to think that people are connected in some kind of
"extra-sensory" way, even if it isn't exactly scientific. But I'm a
little skeptical of the idea that such a connection was demonstrated in
the kind of exercise David L. described. Don't get me wrong, a bunch of
sensitive people standing around, trying to be aware of each other on
some other level, such a thing can be very powerful and I don't doubt
that it was real enough for those in attendence. But I'm skeptical just
because there are so many unconscious signs and signals, so many cues
and gentures, so many details that could be gathered by the traditional
senses. Its just possible that there was nothing "extra-sensory" about
it. I mean it seems there must be a distinction between the impression
made by a thousand tiny clues being added up in some unconscious way,
what I'd call intuition, and true "extra-sensory" perception, a kind of
"vision" totally unrelated to the biological senses. I can't think of a
single example, but such a thing must exist in our experience.
Recall Pirsig's ideas about how the cultural immune system can prevent
us from seeing things, can actually trick our eyes? He used the
dharmakaya light and the green flash as examples. It makes me wonder
what else might be erased from our sight.
I wonder what Pirsig would answer if asked about biology's role when we
"sense" Quality.
The camera obscura was put to use during Locke's lifetime and it serves
as a great "picture" of classical empiricism. He was just ten years
older than Newton and undoubtedly was aware of Sir Issac's work in
optics. Together they were quite comforting. You see the classical
empiricists we suffering badly from a Cartesian hangover. His radical
skeptisicm had created a terrifying kind of doubt and so lots of folks
from Locke to Hume were looking for some kind of certainty, some kind of
solid foundation for our knowledge. They liked to think that our minds
were like the wall inside the camera, accurately reflecting an objective
picture of the outside world. They wanted to think it was a matter of
the laws of optics. Generally speaking, they thought of our perceptions
in mechanistic, SOM terms. Kant made that camera wall, that blank tablet
into a much more complicated and crucial aspect of perception. He said
our minds don't just record and store sensory experience, our minds
alter it in profound ways. You know, his "categories of the mind" are
like different settings on a pasta maker, giving different forms to the
raw stuff as it goes through.
Now we have Linguistics and Neurology, but the questions aren't that
different.
Gotta go, DMB
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